THE AMAZING HUMAN PIN CUSHION

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile, and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train….”

So begins Naked Lunch, written by William S. Burroughs, originally published in 1959, a year after my birth. When I say I read this as a teenager, I am being somewhat truthful, as Burroughs and Bukowski were part of my daily reading routines. But I am not sure if anyone “ reads” Naked Lunch. You can pick it up anywhere in the book, as the Book, and most of Burrough’s writing is plotless. He writes what he calls “routines”, as a junkie’s nod to vaudeville, Naked Lunch has not “ aged” as much I have in those 64 years since it was published. It still snarls its inner sarcasm and is swollen with Burroughsian logic.

I am reminded of Naked Lunch, and my relationship to the writing of William S.Burroughs after yesterdays session for IV hydration. I became a character in a Naked Lunch scenario. Step right up and see The Amazing Human Pin Cushion, as it took five different nurses and eight different veins to find the one vein that could accept the intravenous needle.

“I hit a vein straight away. A column of blood shot up into the syringe for an instant sharp and solid as a red cord" Old Bill Lee never waited so long to find the golden spike into his vein. His collection of junkies would be be shooting up into all kinds of bodily parts, while, through my medical discretion, I am happy to say they still only jab one of my two arms, except when they jab both of them, in tandem, back and forth until “ the blood whisperer” finds the one that will work, the one that is “juicy”, the one that doesn’t fall flat.

Like I said it took eight tries yesterday. You know they have hit the right one when this cold feeling starts creeping up your arm. “Yes, we’re in.”, they triumphantly acknowledge. As the session was near end, my Nurse Practitioner came in to chat. I had already been interviewed by the Nutritionist, who grilled me on my water intakes, and my caloric consumption. “She’ s only doing her job”, I say to myself. Here I am with three nurses trying to find a juicy vein, and this young woman, probably in her twenties, wants to know exactly what I ate or drank in the past 48 hours. There is a default to the ingestion of a meal replacement drink, with its defined 477 calories.

What they don’t say is do not read the ingredient panel, as surely there could never be anyone who dares to call themself a clinical nutritionist that condones the big Agri-Pharma bill of materials, featuring lots of processed GMO corn syrup, canola oil,modified milk ingredients, water and salt. Who could ever in their right mind recommend this crap?

But I am on my knees here, just trying to maintain the basic caloric intake and proper hydration. I am in no position to argue. Perfect Cancer Patient #10,987,655,003. Nobody special. Just another schlumpy Cancer guy trying to get his body back on track without losing his mind along the way.

I confess to the nurses, my coven of Nurse Professionals, Practitioners, and assorted Blood Whisperers, that I have what I call Cancer Fatigue. I’ve grown sick of this shit to be honest. When is it going to end? The treatments are over, but that is just a pause in the assault my body is enduring. I still have to relearn how to drink water, eat, and swallow. Check out my new book EAT, PRAY, SWALLOW.

And according to my coven, I am looking “better.” Not heroin chic, but post-chemo gaunt, haunted, and presumably holy. There remains mostly skeleton, with some strands of residual muscle material, I wouldn’t even deign to call them muscles left on my arms. Sticks really. Something to break my fall, and not much more. My beard with the exception of a few stragglers, is bare like the newborn skin underneath the radiated grizzle. The hairline at the back of my head is sparse and drifting upwards. Such a high hairline. A bowl could have done a better job. The rest if my hair is a bit thinner, but basically still there, although it hasn’t grown in 8 weeks. Odd.

The fifth nurse had to come down from the ER, still wearing her scrubs, not the nice Nursey outfits the other gals have on. She has her student wingman, as most of the teaching professionals do, and surveys the arm landscape of gauze squares and transparent medical tape, focusing midway up the left forearm, taps it a bit, then just commits. Bingo! She hits the vein right away, minimal pain. And we are in…..

My Nurse Practitioner and I discuss how to transition from the hydro morphone, as you can’t just go cold turkey like in the movies, or….as in Naked Lunch. No, you have to carefully titrate down. I have experienced this delayed weaning before, when I had to get myself off Cipralex, an insidious anti-depressant, that fortunately did its job, but then didn’t want to go when I told it to leave. No, it hung on, as it took months to get off that one.

She writes it all out for me, which is essential, as smart as I am, me with a partially functioning brain, the details are extremely important when it comes to opiates. When your body is in a compromised state, mistakes can be fatal. Many times in this process, I have been asked if I have anyone, meaning do you have someone who can check to see that you are still breathing? What a responsibility that is to lay on someone, especially the one person you love more than your own life.

My Nurse Practitioner/ Confessor wants to weigh me before I go, I guess so we can determine the proper price per pound for this sick meat sack I call home. We weigh me, it’s in kg, just to further confuse me, and I say wait, let me have a pee, and then let’s weigh me again. For shits and giggles.

I literally pee away 2 lbs. in a seemingly endless experience of prolonged urination. We all have a good laugh at that. It’s amazing what sells.

I finish up and haltingly walk with my cane to the parking garage, where my dear friend Jazzy waits. She is a font of life stories. You cannot imagine what some people endure in this life. It is her story to tell, so I won’t be sharing it, but let me just say I have utmost respect for her endurance and bravery, dealing with the cards life dealt her from when she was a young child. I love her dearly.

Here we are in our final act, and it all starts to come back, either to haunt us or strangely to comfort us, with our memories of how we got here and how we survived. There is a richness that is precious.

I got home and felt I was starving after my 4 hour cruise through Gilligan’s Cancer Island. I decide a small bowl of rice pudding- Are we back to pudding, after all these weeks- we’ll just wait and see. I set up a glass of ice lemon water, the rice pudding, a small pot of throat tea, and an empty mug for the tea. I turn on the baseball games to watch the Blue Jays, which the programming g guide says is on, but ai can clearly see is not the Blue Jays, only to have to watch the Yankees and the Orioles. The game is interrupted at one point when a throw from second to first goes wild and beans the camera man in the head. The whole game stops, while they attend this poor man. More towels they say. More towels.

I take a tentative bite of rice pudding when all hell breaks loose. I happens…. The Revenge of The Untamed Stomach. Oh no, I quickly grab the empty glass, catching just in time the remnants of the blueberries and oatmeal that I had eaten in the morning. This emptying of my soul, along with my stomach, continues unabated for the next hour. Non stop puking. No fun, on this day of what has become No Fun. Rice pudding, I’m sorry. We will have to restart our relationship another day.

Two hours later Michelle comes home with the prunes I had asked her to pick up, to help with the laxatives I also requested to help move me down below, everything on pause due to the opiates and who knows whatever other combination or side effect of the multitude of drugs they have me on. As I have recounted, there is little going down, and even less coming out, with the exception of pounds of owe. Unless we now count my mouth as an outgoing organ.

I had started the day thinking I could stop the ondansetron, and have seen what a dismal omission this was. I take an ondansetron, which is defined as follows:

Ondansetron is in a class of medications called serotonin 5-HT₃ receptor antagonists. It works by blocking the action of serotonin, a natural substance that may cause nausea and vomiting.

So the drug is really for the brain, not the stomach. Funny how it is all connected.

Doin' the skeleton dance.
The foot bone's connected to the leg bone.
The leg bone's connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone.…

The brain bones connected to the gut bone. Catchy little ditty.

Photograph art by Kevin House

I am reminded here of one of my favourite local and yet world renowned artists, Kevin House, who did many paintings in the style of the old circus freak show posters. He did two for us of our dog’s Petey and Max.

This morning I got up and starting writing this, and put on my headphones to pick the music of the day. Yesterday at the bloodletting was Gaucho by Steely Dan, which I do not recall listening to much growing up, my Steely Dan infatuation by the late Seventies dwindling to the crawling point in their career.

I started listening to Steely Dan back in 1972, after seeing them live on Midnight Special. Donald Fagen did not look like a rock star, which immediately attracted them to me. The band’s name, Steely Dan, actually came from Naked Lunch, so we are full circle now.

Their unique jazz iconic sound has never been duplicated or even copied to any great degree, it being so idiosyncratic and creative. One either loves them or hates them, which I have expounded upon in previous posts, comparing their fans to the fans of Rush. You either get it, or you don’t.

Today I listened to the second record, Countdown to Ecstasy.

Here are the lyrics that hooked me in:

Do you throw out your gold teeth
Do you see how they roll

Tobacco they grow in Peking
In the Year of the Locust
You'll see a sad thing
Even Cathy Berberian knows
Donald Fagen/Walter Becker

Who is Cathy Berberian? Look it up. How many songs reference Cathy Berberian? One only, to the best of my knowledge.

My darling wife might say that is one too many, as she does not share my enthusiasm for Steely Dan. Neither do I share her appreciation of Rush.